Park in Lot 3 without a parking decal or visitor's pass, and you can be assured to find a parking ticket on your car within an hour or so.
Stumble back from a party off-campus, smelling of Miller High Life and debauchery, and you can almost guarantee a summons for underage drinking if you have the misfortune to run into a cop.
But when numerous cars are stolen from a parking lot, the only guarantee we have here at the College is cops and campus administrators alike won't do a damn thing.
Forgive me if I sound bitter, but I am. On Oct. 20, I became the latest victim of a rash of car thefts that have hit the campus and Lot 6 since the beginning of the semester. My car was the seventh stolen in eight weeks.
In terms of campus crime, these thefts have constituted a hefty chunk of serious crimes committed on campus. Yet, what have Campus Police and the College administration done to combat this growing problem?
Seemingly very little. As of press time, the College has made precious few references to the thefts, sending out one mass e-mail cautioning students to secure their belongings early in the semester, long before the number of stolen cars began to climb.
When interviewed for an earlier Signal article on the car thefts in September, Police Chief John Collins deigned to impart this gem to worried students: "Try and make sure everything is locked."
Instead of stating the obvious, maybe Campus Police can come up with more effective means of policing Lot 6 besides driving around the garage every hour.
As Matthew Golden, executive director of Public Relations and Communications, acknowledged, if thieves are utilizing skeleton keys, it would make it exceedingly difficult for police to realize a vehicle was actually being broken into, necessitating more creative approaches to the problem.
Campus Police and College administrators seeming disregard for student and property safety is an insult to those who work hard to attend and afford this institution.
Collins and Campus Police maintain they have increased patrols of Lot 6 since the string of thefts began in September, yet this has obviously done little in terms of preventing crime. While cops have taken to joining Community Advisors on nightly roves, busting any freshmen audacious enough to play beer pong too loudly, criminals have been stealing thousands of dollars worth of student property out from under their noses.
Would it be so difficult to send out a timely alert e-mail advising students with certain makes and models of cars to avoid Lot 6, where every theft has taken place? Of the seven cars stolen, four were either Nissans or Hondas. If I and other victims had been informed of this, perhaps we could have taken further precautions to protect our property, like installing theft devices or attempting to park in other lots.
